The phone calls came as Yerevan and Baku announced that their foreign ministers were heading to Washington for a fresh round of talks this week.
The readout of Blinken’s phone call with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian released by a Department of State spokesperson on April 29 said that the U.S. secretary of state spoke with the Armenian leader “to underscore the importance of Armenia-Azerbaijan peace discussions and pledged continued U.S. support.”
“Secretary Blinken reiterated that direct dialogue and diplomacy are the only path to a durable peace in the South Caucasus. He expressed his appreciation for the Prime Minister’s continued commitment to the peace process,” it added.
The next day Blinken repeated the message of the importance of peace discussions and continued U.S. support in his phone call with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev during which he also “shared his belief that peace was possible.”
The phone calls came amid heightened tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan after Baku on April 23 set up a checkpoint at the entrance to the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.
Azerbaijan’s roadblock tightened what already was an effective blockade of the region by government-backed Azerbaijani protesters since December.
Armenia described the move as “illegal” and “unacceptable”, stressing that it contradicted the Moscow-brokered 2020 ceasefire agreement that placed solely Russian peacekeepers in charge of providing security for Nagorno-Karabakh and ensuring free movement for its people along the five-kilometer-wide corridor. Yerevan also ruled out any new negotiations regarding the Lachin corridor that it said Baku must unblock.
According to a spokesperson in Washington, during his April 30 phone call with Aliyev Blinken also “expressed the United States’ deep concern that Azerbaijan’s establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin corridor undermines efforts to establish confidence in the peace process, and emphasized the importance of reopening the Lachin corridor to commercial and private vehicles as soon as possible.”
According to his press office, Pashinian also raised the issue of the Lachin corridor in his phone call with Blinken. In particular, he reportedly emphasized that “the steps taken by the Azerbaijani side in the Lachin corridor are aimed at the consistent implementation of its policy of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and the complete eviction of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.”
The Armenian prime minister also “emphasized the importance of the adequate response of the international community to Azerbaijan’s actions, which undermine regional security, and taking active steps towards the unconditional implementation of the order of the International Court of Justice.”
The Hague-based court ruled on February 22 that the Azerbaijani government must “take all measures at its disposal to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin corridor in both directions.”
Official Baku denies blockading Nagorno-Karabakh, pledging to ensure, in cooperation with Russian peacekeepers deployed in the region, all “necessary conditions” for “a transparent and orderly passage of Armenian residents living in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan” in both directions.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for decades. Some 30,000 people were killed in a war in the early 1990s that left ethnic Armenians in control of the predominantly Armenian-populated region and seven adjacent districts of Azerbaijan proper.
Decades of internationally mediated talks failed to result in a diplomatic solution and the simmering conflict led to another war in 2020 in which nearly 7,000 soldiers were killed on both sides.
The six-week war in which Azerbaijan regained all of the Armenian-controlled areas outside of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as chunks of territory inside the Soviet-era autonomous oblast proper ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire under which Moscow deployed about 2,000 troops to the region to serve as peacekeepers.
Tensions along the restive Armenian-Azerbaijani border and around Nagorno-Karabakh leading to sporadic fighting and loss of life have persisted despite the ceasefire. At least three Azerbaijani and four Armenian soldiers were killed in the most recent border skirmish on April 11.